Posted on 08/17/2011 11:17:55 AM PDT by NYer
ROCKVILLE, MD, August 16, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The astonishing story of a Maryland family with 11 children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, has been featured in a back-to-school piece by the Washington Post Newspaper. The August 10 story chronicles the Kilmer household's day-to-day life and details how they manage to stay lighthearted and have fun while balancing what some might consider an impossibly difficult lifestyle.
Read the Washington Post story here.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews (LSN), Larry Kilmer, a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, said he viewed speaking with the Post about his family as "an opportunity to show that large families can exist and survive in the Washington area."
"It was a chance for others to see that with some sacrifices it can be done," he said. "Despite the fear that 'you cannot survive,' we wanted to show that it is possible."
The article introduces readers to Larry, a high school teacher, and his wife Jen, a stay-at-home mom, as well as children Christina, Joe, Michelle, Julie, Tommy, Steven, Matthew, John Paul, Larry, Rosemary, and Peter, none of whom are twins or triplets.
The feature chronicles the Kilmer family's daily life, from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. It notes the many challenges the family faces, but also highlights the many blessings, including the tight friendships shared by the children and the role that the "rock of Faith" plays in the Kilmer household.
"A large family helps to instill in a person many of the strong values and virtues that a society needs in order to survive and continue," Kilmer told LifeSiteNews.com. "In my opinion, the issue of putting others first is at the heart of a large family as you work and exist with other human beings in a close-knit environment."
Commenting on the Washington Post story, Jenn Giroux, founder of Speaking of Motherhood, who is also the mother of a large family, told LSN, "This is an incredible and fair portrayal of this beautiful large family. It is rare to get this perspective from a liberal media outlet."
"Large families have a positive impact on society," Giroux said. "At a time when our national birthrate is dangerously low, large families are producing the future workers that will sustain the elderly in the very near future… They are raising the next generation of Church and political leaders."
"At the heart of large families is the surrender to God’s supreme rights over our lives and an embrace and love of His gift of children," she said. "Unfortunately, this is a foreign and/or unknown concept that has been gradually lost over the last 50 years."
"It requires ‘blind trust’ in God in times of difficulty," Giroux said. "This is a difficult concept for a contracepting society where those today seek to control everything from the day they conceive to sometimes the very sex of their baby."
Read the Washington Post story here.
"It requires ‘blind trust’ in God in times of difficulty," Giroux said. "This is a difficult concept for a contracepting society where those today seek to control everything from the day they conceive to sometimes the very sex of their baby."
Mom looks happy. Dad looks bewildered.
A beautiful family!
May God bless and prosper them!
Dont take any money from the state and you can pump them out by the truckload for all I care.
I bet they’ll be getting hate mail and email from the anti-life/anti-child Leftists in short order. I’m sure they receive mean looks and probably get a few nasty verbal attacks when they are out in public from them, also.
Funny, our family grew up in Rockville and I was one of the 9 children. Seven of them born in a 10 year span. My mom never even had a driver’s license. All of us are still in touch and we’re all doing pretty good.
I would be pleased to see this all across America. Someone needs to keep the population growing.
If it makes the left cringe, it must be good for America.
Lovely
Oh yeah, especially in the career-at-all-costs world of the D.C. area.
“The article introduces readers to Larry, a high school teacher, and his wife Jen, a stay-at-home mom,”
Only gov’t workers can afford to have large families now.
[ Dont take any money from the state and you can pump them out by the truckload for all I care. ]
NAILED IT!
Hmmm...when my wife gives birth to our third child in a few months, we’ll have three kids under the age of 4, but I cannot imagine 11 kids all under the age of 12.
I was oldest of 9 at age 15.
It’s not that big a deal......
hahaha I was thinking the exact same thing. He has a bit of the “what have I done” look.
By the shear number of boys they have, he probably is tired from patching holes in the walls and repairing things all day.
He said, "well, we lived on a farm close to railroad tracks and every morning a train would pass at 4:30. It was too early for breakfast and too late to go back to sleep."
I'm guessing the kids are probably in the Free/Reduced lunch program at their school(s).
The father in that picture looks like he’s just written his suicide note. Just sayin’
When I was a kid there was a local family with thirteen children. Their last name was Baker, so we called them .... the Baker’s dozen.
Made me LOL - my dad was one of 10 children born across about 20 years but I never got to ask his dad a similar question as he died when my dad was 5 years old.
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